The hypocrisy of some nations

Video:U.S. Hypocrisy? Telling Russia To Stay Out of Ukraine

Double standards are on display as Western leaders attack Russia regarding Ukraine, while they themselves commit or endorse worse aggression on other countries.

WORLD attention has focused on Ukraine recently. With President Victor Yanukovych making his exit and a new government formed, events shifted to Crimea, with accusations that the Russian military took over the region.

Yanukovych, resurfacing in a Russian town, said he left as his life was at risk, the new regime is illegitimate, and he is still the president.

Sizeable crowds in Crimea (many of whose population are ethnic Russian) are showing anti-Kiev and pro-Russian feelings and the Crimean Parliament had decided to hold a referendum on whether to remain in Ukraine or break away and be part of Russia.

Western leaders have attacked Russian President Vladimir Putin for his alleged invasion of Crimea.

The Russian argument is that it has not invaded, that in any case it has a legitimate interest in Crimea due to historical links and the ethnic Russians who live there have asked for protection against the new and illegitimate Kiev regime.

Whatever the merits or otherwise of Russia’s position and actions, it is clear that there has been a long historical Russian-Crimea-Ukraine relationship. The complex condition requires a correspondingly complex solution.

The rhetoric of some Western leaders is aggressive. They accused Russia of violating sovereignty and international law, among other things.

The United States plans to ban visas for selected Russian officials, followed by sanctions on Russian banks, freezing assets of its companies, and possibly trade measures.

US President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry have accused Putin of making use of false claims for its invasion, that Crimea is in danger.

“This is the 21st century and we should not see nations step backwards to behave in a 19th or 20th century fashion,” said Kerry. “It is not appropriate to invade a country and at the end of a barrel of a gun dictate what you are trying to achieve.”

Obama said “Russia cannot with impunity put its soldiers on the ground and violate basic principles that are recognised around the world”, adding that Russia is “on the wrong side of history”.

Listening to the American leaders lecturing Russia in their self-righteous tone, one is struck by the double standards and hypocrisy involved.

They don’t seem to realise how they have violated the same principles and behaviour they demand of Russia.

It was after all the United States that invaded Iraq in 2003, massively bombing its territory and killing hundreds of thousands, on the grounds that Saddam Hussein had amassed weapons of mass destruction.

The UN Security Council would not give the green light. No weapons of mass destruction were found. Many experts considered the war against Iraq a violation of international law, a view also expressed in a media interview by the then UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

The Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal in 2011 found former US president George W. Bush and former British prime minister Tony Blair guilty of crimes against humanity and genocide as a result of their roles in the Iraq war.

The United States also waged war in Afghanistan, changing the regime, resulting in thousands of deaths. In Libya, the US and its allies carried out massive bombing, which aided opposition forces and led to the killing of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

Even now there are sanctions and the threat of military action against Iran on the suspicion it wants to develop nuclear weapons, which Iran has denied.

In contrast, the US turns a blind eye on Israel’s ownership of nuclear weapons. And when Israel conducted the blanket bombing of Lebanon and Gaza in recent years, with thousands of deaths, there was no condemnation at all from the US, which has also blocked UN Security Council resolutions and actions on its ally.

The US has also come under attack from human rights groups for its use of drones against suspected terrorists but which has also killed many civilians in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen.

Last week, the UN Human Rights Council published a Special Rapporteur’s report which detailed the deaths of civilians caused by US drone attacks, and raised many questions of possible violations of international human rights law.

All these actions were done in the 21st century, which adds to many other actions in the 20th century.

It’s thus remarkable that Obama and Kerry could with a straight face accuse Russia of not acting in a 21st century manner, and being on the wrong side of history.

There appears to be still one law for the most powerful, and another for others. The former can invade and kill, while lecturing self-righteously to others.

Whatever one thinks of Russia’s action in Crimea, it should be noted that no one has been killed because of it, at least not yet. Compare that to the hundreds of thousands or millions, who have died and suffered from past and present wars of the US and other Western countries.

Though much of the mainstream media also takes the establishment view, some Western journalists have also pointed out their leaders’ hypocrisy.

In an article, “America’s Staggering Hypocrisy in Ukraine,” the well-known American journalist Robert Parry remarked: “Since World War II, the United States has invaded or otherwise intervened in so many countries that it would be challenging to compile a complete list …

“So, what is one to make of Secretary of State John Kerry’s pronouncement that Russia’s military intervention in the Crimea section of Ukraine – at the behest of the country’s deposed president – is a violation of international law that the United States would never countenance?

“Are Kerry and pretty much everyone else in Official Washington so lacking in self-awareness that they don’t realise that they are condemning actions by Russian President Vladimir Putin that are far less egregious than what they themselves have done?”

Parry concludes that the overriding hypocrisy of the media, Kerry and nearly all of Official Washington is their insistence that the United States actually promotes the principle of democracy or, for that matter, the rule of international law.

Global Trends - By Martin Khor

> The views expressed are entirely the writer’s own.

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Nation of Hypocrites 

America is tragically becoming a “Nation of Hypocrites”. How is this so? ... Is it any wonder then that some people look down upon us rather than respect us?

Wild Wild West of Libya, Gadhafi killed, his Rise and Fall! How much is True?

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Wild Wild West of Libya

BEHIND THE HEADLINES By BUNN NAGARA

In the heat of battle, vengeance is once more mistaken or substituted for justice.

Technically, Gaddafi was treated much the same way he had treated his enemies

SHOUTS of jubilation were punctuated by celebratory gunfire.

It was the Wild Wild West Asia and North Africa show in real time. Whoops of triumphalism rang out through Sirte, then all of Libya, at a tyrant’s death.



More than anything else, confusion reigned over the death of Col Muammar Gaddafi.

United States President Barack Obama indicated the US role made it all possible. Nato intimated it was the chief sponsor of the military effort.

France claimed credit for this biggest kill of their air campaign. French warplanes had strafed a convoy whisking the fallen strongman from Sirte.

The National Transitional Council (NTC) claimed credit for locating and killing Gaddafi. It said a comrade had shot Gaddafi dead with a 9mm pistol.

Then confusion deepened when they seemed to distance themselves from the killing. The certainty of Gaddafi’s death was matched only by the fuzziness of how he had died.

He was said to have been shot in both legs, then just one, and also in the abdomen or back. He was then shot in the arm and in the head and, in between, he was beaten.

Throughout this messy melee, thoughtful considerations became obscured as vulgar festivities and gloating hung over his murder.

The rabble loosely identified with the NTC were full of it. For them there would be no trial, no sentencing, no execution, not even a kangaroo court.

Some foreign leaders felt similarly even if they used different words. It went with the kind of mentality that would bomb and strafe civilian populations in Libya.

Technically, Gaddafi was treated much the same way he had treated his enemies.

There was therefore a sense of equivalence and much vengefulness, but justice would be something else.



Mob violence

If he had been tried in a court of law, he might well have been sentenced to death. But there he would have been subjected to due process, placed at the mercy of judicial institutions that a new Libya is supposed to build.

Instead, he was subjected to mob violence and an extra-judicial killing.

By treating him the way he had treated his enemies, the rag-tag militants showed they were no better and no nearer their supposed ideals of democracy and constitutionalism.

Both sides indulged in political violence and routine summary killing.

Beyond the shade of their sentiment, and the tenor of their rhetoric to distinguish them, was only the duration of their bloodfests.

Gaddafi was not only a wanted man in Libya by Libyan jurists, he was a wanted figure by the International Criminal Court.

Dispatching him with a bullet helped him evade both.

NTC officials were first keen to claim credit for his capture and defeat. But they failed to bring him to justice nationally and internationally.

Libyans, particularly those vehemently opposed to Gaddafi, missed an excellent opportunity to defeat what he had stood for.

By subjecting him to due judicial process, they could have shown everyone that a once-mighty tyrant could be humbled and humiliated by the strength of their own country’s judicial and democratic institutions.

If the Western powers that had hastily hounded Gaddafi had helped Libyans subordinate him to a trial, they too would have scored better by demonstrating the power of democracy over dictatorship.



But all that was not to be, once the political process was subjected to the baser instincts and appetites of the trophy hunter’s self-gratification.

There was the argument that Gaddafi refused to quit like Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, as if to justify his killing.

By staying on Gaddafi made things tougher for the NTC, but that would not affect the course or demands of justice.

Adding to the confusion was US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who visited Libya on Tuesday, saying she hoped Gaddafi would soon be captured or killed.

Then she added: “Revenge attacks and vigilantism have no place in the new Libya.”

That was some 48 hours before Gaddafi was attacked and killed by Libyan vigilantes. Sifting through Clinton’s “wow” factor when she first learned of his killing, it is unclear what her stand is.

Legitimate government

Through this hazy surrealism, it seemed only natural for the leading punters to contradict themselves.

Countries like the US that were among the first to recognise the NTC as Libya’s legitimate government saw a “new era” for Libya only upon Gaddafi’s death.

The same shallow sentiment rang through the streets of Sirte and the corridors of the United Nations in New York.

The fact is that Gaddafi’s regime had fallen months ago, on Aug 21 when Tripoli fell. Since then he was never able to mount a return, nor could any of his sons have succeeded him.

The new Libya had sprouted two months before. The fall of Sirte defended by dwindling loyalists was irrelevant because it was only symbolic, the city being Gaddafi’s birthplace and his final bastion after Bani Walid.

For the French President and the British and Turkish Prime Ministers, then Clinton, to confidently visit Tripoli showed that Gaddafi and his forces had long been defeated.

In confusing Gaddafi’s regime with Gaddafi the man, they also confused actual triumph with mere triumphalism.

On the day Clinton was in Tripoli, Amnesty International released a report detailing how the US, Britain and France were among the Western countries that supplied arms to Gaddafi, Mubarak, Assad and others in troubled countries since 2005.

What better way to boost their arms industry than to supply weapons to both sides, then use them on Libya as well? Such was the irony that among Gaddafi’s “golden guns” retrieved by the Sirte mob was reportedly a gilded Browning .45 automatic.

The gun used to kill him might have been a Western weapon as well. The same goes for many of the other guns dangerously circulating around the country.

Commentary by: Colonel  Lim 
They are not telling us about Gaddafi

 HOW MUCH OF THIS IS TRUE?

The international media, influenced by the Americans, has successfully painted Gaddafi as a hard-core dictator, tyrant or whatever you want to call him. However, the media as usual has also failed to show the kind, giving Gaddafi we never heard of. Gaddafi unlike most dictators has managed to show his humane side, the very side we dream of seeing in other dictators. I consider Libyans lucky to a certain extent and one wonders with the new democratic rule they cry for will it improve or worsen life for them. Yes, Gaddafi has spent millions of Libya`s money on personal ventures but is the average Libyan poor? We know others who take a country and destroy it until you feel like there is no hope of restoring this country… looting some prefer to call it. Did Gaddafi loot Libya in any way? 

Now let us get to the unknown facts about the Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi: 

1. There is no electricity bill in Libya; electricity is free for all its citizens.
2. There is no interest on loans, banks in Libya are state-owned and loans given to all its citizens at 0% interest by law.
3. Home considered a human right in Libya – Gaddafi vowed that his parents would not get a house until everyone in Libya had a home. Gaddafi’s father has died while him, his wife and his mother are still living in a tent.
4. All newlyweds in Libya receive $60,000 Dinar (US$50,000) by the government to buy their first apartment so to help start up the family. 

Traditional wedding in Tripoli, Libya

5. Education and medical treatments are free in Libya. Before Gaddafi only 25% of Libyans are literate. Today the figure is 83%.
6. Should Libyans want to take up farming career, they would receive farming land, a farming house, equipments, seeds and livestock to kick-start their farms – all for free.
7. If Libyans cannot find the education or medical facilities they need in Libya, the government funds them to go abroad for it – not only free but they get US$2,300/mth accommodation and car allowance.
8. In Libyan, if a Libyan buys a car, the government subsidized 50% of the price.
9. The price of petrol in Libya is $0.14 per liter.
10. Libya has no external debt and its reserves amount to $150 billion – now frozen globally. 

Great Man-Made River project in Libya… $27 billion

11. If a Libyan is unable to get employment after graduation the state would pay the average salary of the profession as if he or she is employed until employment is found.
12. A portion of Libyan oil sale is, credited directly to the bank accounts of all Libyan citizens.
13. A mother who gave birth to a child receive US$5,000
14. 40 loaves of bread in Libya costs $ 0.15
15. 25% of Libyans have a university degree
16. Gaddafi carried out the world’s largest irrigation project, known as the Great Man-Made River project, to make water readily available throughout the desert country.

Which other dictators have done so much good for his people?

Best Regards, Col.Lim

I have to agree with you Colonel, as that was my reading in between the lines when I heard about him in London decades’ ago. He is humorous too.

In an interview decades ago by BBC ( ?) asking him for his opinion on Ronald Reagan who call him a terrorist, Colonel Gaddafi replied “ whatever he calls me, I am a Colonel.

Whatever he says about himself, he is an actor !”

The minority govt could not have overthrown him without NATO’s  military might ( a combinations of the Great might of the US, Britain, France ..etc. to bully a 3rd world country ) especially the bombings. 

You wonder why they don’t want to bomb Burma’s dictator, NO OIL ?  Hypocrites championing human rights where they have monetary interest !

Libya, from ally to devil in six months !

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 The big question now is which foreign power will dominate Libya. The United States, which has waged this little war from well offstage? Italy, which gets most of its oil from Libya? France, where President Sarkozy has been hinting at a Mediterranean union – bien sure, under French tutelage?

Image via Wikipedia

By Eric S. Margolis

WATCHING rebel gunmen rampage through Col Muammar Gaddafi's Bab al-Aziziya compound – once Tripoli's Forbidden City – was a strange experience for me.

I spent an evening there with Gaddafi in 1987, a year after it was bombed by US warplanes. Libya's "Brother Leader" talked about the Middle East, Palestine, North Africa. He led me by the hand through his ruined private quarters, still reeking of fire and smoke, and showed me the bed in which an American 1,000kg laser-guided bomb killed his two-year-old adopted daughter.

We sat in his gaily coloured Bedouin tent, talking into the night. He opened up to me about his love for fancy dress and beamed happily when I told him, tongue in cheek, how attractive he was to western women.

Call this dictator nostalgia – a feeling not of course shared by a majority of Libyans who are now trying to hunt down their deposed leader of 42 years. Few will miss him. Gaddafi was a blight on Libya and an embarrassment to the Arabs.

Meanwhile, Libya is literally turning into a gold rush as the big western oil firms pile into Libya and pay court to the new government in Tripoli, the National Transitional Council.

Police units and troops from Britain, France and Italy may soon follow – all, naturally, as part of the west's new "humanitarian intervention" strategy that has replaced "counter-terrorism".

Libya is in semi-chaos and its economy devastated by six months of conflict. The food distribution system has broken down. Thousands of heavily armed "rambos" make their own law. There are barely any state institutions aside from the national oil company and central bank. The secret police have evaporated.

As a modest historian, I am delighted when history draws striking parallels. We now see the fascinating spectacle of those old colonial powers, Britain, France, and Italy, starting to move back into their former overseas possessions.

Britain ruled Libya until a young colonel named Muammar Gaddafi overthrew the doddering old British puppet, King Idris. The US lost one of its largest bomber bases at Libya's Wheelus Field. Neither nation was to forgive Gaddafi.



Imperial Britain had seized Libya from Italy's fascist regime in 1943. Italy colonised Libya after tearing it away from the crumbling Ottoman Empire. Italy used concentration camps and poison gas to terrorise Libyans into submission.

France, whose colonial empire included neighbouring Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Chad, and Niger, long competed with Italy and Spain for regional domination. Mussolini's Fascist regime pressed claims to Tunisia, Corsica, Nice and Cannes.

An obscure colonial border dispute over Chad's Aouzou Strip dating from the 1920's between France and Italy led to a nasty little Franco-Libyan border war there in 1987.

French Foreign Legionnaires in jeeps, disguised as Chadian nomads, drove the wretched Libyan army from Aouzou in what became known as the "Toyota War". Disguised French special forces and Legionnaires, as well as Britain's SAS, just used the same theatrical tactics in Libya.

The big question now is which foreign power will dominate Libya. The United States, which has waged this little war from well offstage? Italy, which gets most of its oil from Libya? France, where President Sarkozy has been hinting at a Mediterranean union – bien sure, under French tutelage?

Oil is a potent aphrodisiac. Libya has vast reserves of premium, low-sulphur oil and gas, and a hundred-year supply of ancient artesian water.

Energy-rich Libya will become an important market for European consumer products and industrial exports, as well as a huge major supplier of investment funds from its estimated US$50 billion worth of annual oil exports.

There are more prizes to be had: Libya's gold reserves, estimated at US$4-5 billion; and its nearly US$100 billion of foreign deposits and investments.

The files of its intelligence agencies which may reveal the true story behind the bombings of a French and US airliner in the 1980's.

Western intelligence will also want to talk to Gaddafi's intelligence chief, closest confidant and brother-in-law, Abdullah Senoussi, with whom I spent a most interesting evening in Tripoli. France has a warrant out for his arrest for the 1989 bombing of a UTA airliner over Niger.

It's likely US, British and French intelligence have already grabbed Gaddafi's files.

Eric S. Margolis is an award-winning, internationally syndicated columnist, writing mainly about the Middle East and South Asia. Comments: letters@thesundaily.com

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Ex-colonizers aid Libyan Rebels Assault on Tripoli 'planned weeks ago';No easy transition, rebuilding after Gaddafi  

Ex-colonizers aid Libyan Rebels Assault on Tripoli 'planned weeks ago';No easy transition, rebuilding after Gaddafi

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Assault on Tripoli 'planned weeks ago'

Details emerge of rebel and Nato plans to oust Gaddafi, involving bombing, sleeper cells and special forces squads
By Richard Norton-Taylor and Dominic Rushe

'Nato played a big role in liberating Tripoli.' Photograph: Sean Smith for the Guardian
 
Details of the rebel uprising in Tripoli are emerging, showing weeks of careful planning by rebels and their international allies before they seized the Libyan capital.

Rebel leaders had been hoping that the people of Tripoli would rise up against Muammar Gaddafi, but after a bloody crackdown crushed local opposition they began planning their own revolt.
Image via Wikipedia
British military and civilian advisers, including special forces troops, along with those from France, Italy and Qatar, have spent months with rebel fighters, giving them key, up-to-date intelligence and watching out for any al-Qaida elements trying to infiltrate the rebellion.

More details emerged yesterday of how Nato forces helped Libyan rebels storm Tripoli. "Honestly, Nato played a very big role in liberating Tripoli. They bombed all the main locations that we couldn't handle with our light weapons," said Fadlallah Haroun, a military spokesman who helped organise the operation, according to the Associated Press.

Prior to the attack, rebels smuggled weapons into Tripoli and stashed them in safe houses. Local revolutionaries were told that protests would begin after the Ramadan evening prayers on 20 August, a day that coincidentally marks the anniversary of the prophet Muhammad's liberation of Mecca.

Rebels organised a flotilla of boats from the town of Misrata in an operation dubbed Mermaid Dawn. Tripoli's nickname in Libya is mermaid or "bride of the sea". As sleeper cells rose up and rebel soldiers advanced on the city, Nato launched targeted bombings – methodical strikes on Gaddafi's crucial communications facilities and weapons caches.

An increasing number of American hunter-killer drones provided round-the-clock surveillance.

Covert special forces teams from Qatar, France, Britain and some east European states provided critical assistance, such as logisticians, forward air controllers for the rebel army, as well as damage-assessment analysts and other experts, a diplomat at Nato's HQ in Brussels told AP.



Foreign military advisers on the ground provided real-time intelligence to the rebels, enabling them to maximise their limited firepower against the enemy.

To boost morale, US officials passed along snippets of intercepted telephone conversations in which Libyan commanders complained about shortages of food, water and ammunition, the New York Times reported. US officials told the paper that the rebel seizure of the oil refinery at Zawiya last week may have been the campaign's real turning point, cutting off Tripoli's fuel supplies.

As the regime collapsed, Gaddafi's aides called several Obama administration officials, including the American ambassador, Gene Cretz, and Jeffrey Feltman, assistant secretary of state to try to broker a truce, according to the Times. Officials said the calls were not taken seriously.

As rebel forces broke through the frontlines and approached Tripoli, locals were inspired to join them. The surge also forced government troops into the open, allowing allied warplanes to strike.

Gaddafi's forces attempted to hold off the rebels on Sunday by trying to outflank the rebels and recapture Zawiya. But Nato warplanes bombed the convoy before it could reach the city as part of a series of attacks on Gaddafi's forces, including bombing raids on bunkers set up in civilian buildings in Tripoli in an effort to ward off allied attacks.

The western advisers are expected to remain in Libya, advising on how to maintain law and order on the streets, and on civil administration, following Gaddafi's downfall. They have learned the lessons of Iraq, when the US got rid of all prominent officials who had been members of Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath party and dissolved the Iraqi army and security forces.

The role of Nato is likely to continue to be significant. Its work could include humanitarian aid and logistical support for the UN. "The biggest caveat was 'Don't consider anything that would involve Nato forces on the ground'," said an official.

The North Atlantic Council, Nato's decision-making body, had agreed that any role for Nato had to "satisfy the criteria of a demonstrable need, a sound legal basis and wide regional support", said Nato spokeswoman Oana Lungescu.

Nato will continue to deploy strike aircraft, spy planes and unmanned drones over Libya but will not put any troops on the ground to help the transitional council maintain law and order, alliance officials made clear last night.

If any international organisation were to take on the task of a stabilisation force, it would be the UN, they said. "It is a classic case for blue helmets," said one official.

The North Atlantic Council has set out "political guidelines" for military planners who are now drawing up options. "Nato will help the UN if asked," said an official.There are many Nato countries that could work on the ground, given the extensive experience of post-conflict stabilisation in the Balkans. No Nato government official wants to compare Libya with Iraq or Afghanistan.

Nato aircraft flew 20,121 sorties, including 7,587 strike sorties, over the past five months, the alliance said yesterday.

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No easy transition, rebuilding as Libya braces for new era after Gaddafi

(Xinhua)

A picture of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi lies in trash as a Libyan stands guard outside the airport in Tripoli on August 24, 2011. (Xinhua/AFP)
CAIRO, Aug. 25 (Xinhua) -- Despite fierce fighting between Muammar Gaddafi's forces and rebels in some areas of capital Tripoli and the unknown whereabouts of Gaddafi, Libya is set to brace for a new era after the rebels have claimed control of most of the country with the help of NATO's military operations.

The opposition National Transitional Council (NTC) is preparing to move its headquarters from Benghazi to Tripoli. More countries have recognized the legitimacy of the NTC and offered to help rebuild the war-shattered, oil-rich country.

It is a fact that the Gaddafi leadership has substantially crumbled, although the battle in Libya has not been completely over.

Analysts say Libya faces a tough road ahead in its political transition and reconstruction. Among the top challenges are the restoration of stability and power transition. Some even fear the post-war Libya may become another Iraq or Somalia.

STABILITY

Libya's rebels have offered a reward of two million Libyan dinars (about 1.3 million U.S. dollars) for anyone who turns in Gaddafi. The opposition says they will bring them to justice if they are captured alive.

On Wednesday, heavy fighting continued in some areas of the capital between Gaddafi loyalists and the rebels, While Gaddafi vowed death or victory in the fight against the "aggression."

Definitely, fleeing Gaddafi will not give up easily. No one could predict what he will do next amid fears of the possible use of chemical weapons. The rebels believe the final victory relied on the capture or killing of Gaddafi. Sirte remains under control of Gaddafi's troops. Thus concerns arise as to how long the battle will last between Gaddafi and the rebels.

These are key factors to affect the opposition's urgent agendas such as power transition and restoration of normalcy for citizens' life.

"Speaking about the future of Libya after Gaddafi, it is very difficult to predict any scenarios of situation," Akrm Houssam, researcher with the Cairo-based National Center of Middle East Studies in Egypt, told Xinhua.

"But what I can assure is we would not see any kind of stability or peace in Libya after Gaddafi, because I think the militia belonging to Gaddafi will continue some kind of civil war with the rebels. We will see another kind of conflict between the two fronts, " said Houssam.

"Some tribes supporting Gaddafi still refuse what the rebels do. I believe they will continue their resistance," he said. The members of these tribes inside Gaddafi's army may return to their tribes and form some small militia.

He warned of a repetition in Libya of what we had happened in Iraq after the disbanding of Saddam Hussein's troops after the 2003 war. Remnants of Saddam's army are believed to be behind some terrorist attacks leading to the fragile security situation of Iraq.

To make pro-Gaddafi tribes part of a new political process and include government troops into the new army to be built will help stabilize the situation, according to analysts.

But if pro-Gaddafi figures are punished, instability will prevail for some time, they predict.

"The change of a regime and society will not be a stable process. It is normal that more conflicts will come," said Hoda Regheb, professor of political science at Cairo-based Misr International University, in an interview with Xinhua.

One of the biggest challenges for the new government will be how to overcome tribal conflicts, said Regheb. She said it was genius for Gaddafi to keep all the tribes under his power for decades.

As is the similar case with Tunisia and Egypt whose presidents were toppled by protests earlier this year, security vacuum poses another threat to post-Gaddafi Libya. In Egypt, the lack of security and a sharp increase of various crimes after the fall of ex-President Hosni Mubarak have affected the country's pillar tourism industry and citizens' daily life.

It is urgent to establish professional police forces to protect citizens in Libya, said Sayed Mustafa, professor of political science at Cairo University, in an interview with Xinhua.

Foreign ministers of the Cairo-based Arab League countries stressed Wednesday the necessity to speed up actions for the stability, security and peace in Libya. In a statement, the ministers called on all the Libyan powers to adhere to tolerance and avoid revenge.

Meanwhile, the NATO has said it would not send ground troops to post-Gaddafi Libya. Both the NTC and the Libyan people will be against the presence of foreign troops, said Mustafa.

TRANSITION AND REBUILDING

The rebel NTC chairman Abdel Jalil has said the country would have legislative and presidential elections in eight months. A democratic government and a just constitution will be established. To ensure a smooth transition, the NTC needs to overcome a number of political and social challenges.

"We have now a fully destroyed state, a state without institutions, government, stability or peace. The transitional council will deal with these problems," said Houssam.

"Especially, the transitional council is a group of some contradictory fronts. Whether the transitional council will remain united is the question, " he added.

Houssam wonders how the transitional council deals with al- Qaida which challenges Libya. Al-Qaida members united with others to overthrow the Gaddafi leadership. But after Gaddafi leaves, it will be hard for them to remain united on how to rule the nation, he said.

Libya is a typical tribal society. "To have a centralized government is very difficult," said Regheb. She warns of further collapse of the country if a federal government is formed.

Analysts hold that a federal state is possible for Libya. But the rights of oil will be bargained as the known oil reserves are located in certain areas, said Shady Abdel, another political analyst in Middle East studies. In Iraq, the regional or central governments have been negotiating the rights to export oil or make oil deals.

"Up till now, there has been no much agreement among Libya powers as to the political system, whether it is parliamentary or presidential, federal or not federal," Adel told Xinhua.

A key oil producer in Africa, the restoration of oil production will be vital to the rebuilding of the economy of the country with a population of around six million.

Western powers, European countries in particular, will pour more investment into the country, especially in the oil sector, say analysts, who believe the oil interests are the major reason behind the military intervention. So far, some Western powers have pledged aid to Libya.

Similar concerns are raised in this respect. The economic rebuilding needs stability. In Iraq, fragile security featuring frequent terrorist bomb attacks have hindered the pace of rebuilding eight years after the war.

If the political stability is achieved in Libya, economic rebuilding will be easier, said Adel.

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Global military dominance becoming unaffordable

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Midweek by BUNN NAGARA

Both ‘Britannia’ and the Western alliance are losing the means to perpetuate military-political hegemony worldwide.



BRITAIN was once a proud maritime power, with a foremost Royal Navy that policed a global empire on which “the sun never set.”

These days the British Navy has trouble trying to pin down a single Third World country with a tottering regime: Libya. This incompatibility between present Western capacities and current intentions is, however, greater than any disjuncture with past glories.

This week Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope, Britain’s First Sea Lord, announced that the Royal Navy would not be able to sustain the current campaign against Libya for more than six months. He also noted that the decline is in both equipment inventory and, consequently, morale.

Britain’s Strategic Defence and Security Review last year had cut 10,000 jobs in the Navy and Royal Air Force, and consigned the aircraft carrier Ark Royal, the frigate HMS Cumberland and the once-iconic Harrier jets to the storeroom or junkyard.

As the Libya military campaign suddenly loomed, the Cumberland was diverted there to help in evacuating British nationals. Yet for Downing Street, Britain remains a leading military power with the world’s fourth-largest defence budget.



Evidently like much of Europe, Britain’s lack of appetite for global patrolling work is not totally in sync with US interventionist moves. The “pole positions” occupied by Britain and France over Col. Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya helps to conceal the incongruity, but not for long.

When US Defence Secretary Robert Gates reportedly blasted unnamed Nato partners in Brussels last week for not contributing their share, he ridiculed some for running out of ammunition at critical times in laying siege to a country. The Royal Navy now needs to purchase more Cruise missiles from the US after firing some of them.

The US provides more than 75% of Nato’s budget, with Gates wondering aloud whether this major contribution and Nato itself could be sustained. All of this has come at a time of budget squeezes, after Osama bin Laden’s death and a Cold War which ended 20 years ago.

Washington has been lobbying its European partners in Nato to raise their military commitment, much of it in vain. It is not that the latter do not share US concerns about global instability, but rather they prefer political, diplomatic, economic and social solutions rather than inordinately military ones.

After Iraq, the US has waded into Afghanistan, Pakistan and Libya while straining to get stuck into Syria. Its challenge is to get a sizeable number of allies to go along to a significant degree.

For much of the world outside Washington, a propensity for unilateral military intervention abroad links these various armed adventures. It is not a popular indulgence, not even when the spectre of international terrorism is invoked as the alternative to inaction.

If the continued role of global policeman today seems dated, it is even more surreal given emerging major powers such as those in BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa). These are all fast-growing major economies, besides Russia and China being permanent members of the UNSC with veto power.

This week both Moscow and Beijing boycotted a UNSC meeting called by the Western powers to discuss a proposed resolution against Syria. The other BRICS countries are also unhappy with the prospect of further war against another oil-rich Muslim country.

Even in Western circles there is strong reluctance to rely on more military power. Germany, Europe’s leading economy and a major Nato partner, is still unconvinced by the campaign against Libya.

But if the interests of the military-industrial complex are any guide, efforts will continue towards war. Officially there are six major US military bases in Afghanistan, but on the ground US and other foreign forces are stationed at some 400 bases in the country.

Although the Obama White House is supposed to comply with its pullout schedule in Afghanistan, secret talks with Kabul are continuing over the actual outcome. There are reports that US forces may well remain in Afghanistan for decades after the 2014 complete pullout date.

On the surface the issue is a resurgent Taliban and their terror connections, but strategically Afgha­nistan is critically located in Central Asia next door to China, Pakistan and Iran. So long as it remains in that position, which it will, the great powers will play their “games” while the locals will fight a war to resist them.

Afghanistan meanwhile is pressing for better terms in a draft agreement that would reflect its sense of sovereignty. Whether that would work is another question.